Did you hear the one about the Chinese leader's son who was killed in his Ferrari recently? Probably not. How about the fact that the government's new transition is going about a smooth as a five day beard?

According to a few media reports over the last week, China's top leadership is buzzing like an angry bee hive. The Financial Times went so far as to say that a "coup" was in the works. Or at least the threat of one.

Since Bo Xilai, one of China’s most powerful leaders, was removed from his job last week, the public has been speculating on their Weibo accounts (the Chinese Twitter) as to what's going on in Beijing. This has been one dramatic changing of the guard in China. Other than a one-line statement on Bo’s dismissal published late last week, China’s heavily censored media have not mentioned his name, let alone provided any clues about what will happen to him.

For investors who thought the changing leadership would be smooth in order not to disrupt an already slowing economy, Bo's surprise exit raises questions about political risk in China.

The FT has taken to publish rumors and innuendo about a possible political breakdown, writing on Thursday that "one rumor that spread rapidly on Monday night (was that) a military coup had been launched by Zhou Yongkang, an ally of Mr. Bo’s and the man in charge of China’s state security apparatus, and gun battles had erupted in Zhongnanhai, the top leadership compound in the heart of Beijing."

The FTs reporter in Beijing drove past the compound late on Monday and so nothing out of the ordinary. By Wednesday night, there was still no indication that anything was going on. However, one person with close ties to China’s security apparatus said Mr Zhou had been ordered not to make any public appearances or take any high-level meetings and was “already under some degree of control”.

Adding to the air of intrigue in the capital, a local report of a car crash on Sunday involving the son of a top leader driving his Ferrari ran in online news sites but was quickly removed by official censors, the FT reported.

Jon Huntsman, a former Republican presidential hopeful and US ambassador to China who met Bo a number of times, told the FT that Bo's demise revealed serious rifts among the top leadership of the country.

“The splits in the standing committee [over reform] are as pronounced now as they were during the (1989) Tiananmen Square period,” Huntsman was quoted as saying. “Politics in China is a rough and tumble business. This is an open and public evidence of this and what happens behind the velvet curtain that the world never sees.”

News on the political fiasco unfolding in China had Nouriel Roubini, straight from his trip to the communist/capitalist hybrid stronghold, writing for clients of his economic consulting firm in New York that the changing of the guard made reforms harder to implement. Without them, Roubini notes, a hard landing will be harder to avoid.